Why is Killing Morally Wrong?

types: ArticleThis is the author's final version of an articles submitted to Hart. The definitive version was published in King's Law Journal, Volume 25, Number 3, December 2014, pp. 426-439(14) http://dx.doi.org/10.5235/09615768.25.3.426For most people it is obvious that killing is wrong. It is harder to explain why killing is wrong. The purpose of this article is to present a Buddhist answer. Killing is wrong because of the harm it causes to the killer. As the explanation unfolds, we shall also consider other views for why killing is wrong, to show how a Buddhist approach interacts with them. In particular, we shall consider the claims that death is an intrinsic evil, and that killing harms the victim

Distributed Morality in an Information Society

The phenomenon of distributed knowledge is well-known in epistemic logic. In this paper, a similar phenomenon in ethics, somewhat neglected so far, is investigated, namely distributed morality. The article explains the nature of distributed morality, as a feature of moral agency, and explores the implications of its occurrence in advanced information societies. In the course of the analysis, the concept of infraethics is introduced, in order to refer to the ensemble of moral enablers, which, although morally neutral per se, can significantly facilitate or hinder both positive and negative moral behaviours.Peer reviewe